A Matter of Informality

Last weekend I took my first solo trip since arriving in Nairobi. I jumped on a "luxury" matatu, which meant that there were only nine seats in the back instead of twelve, and there was none of the usual squishing and sitting on each others laps, at 8:04 ... and proceeded to wait.

Matatus on their way hardly stop at all, but a matatu at the start of its trip waits until it is full. Not almost full, not full enough. The entrepreneurs in Nairobi have an exceptional handle on their margins, marginal rate of return, and cost structure. The monetary value of time is uncertain, the cost of petrol is concrete (and high).

Waiting can be hard for me. Invariably I begin to wonder if I should have boarded a different matatu, if my timing was off, if I had time to buy the paper ... But waiting is a fact of life in Nairobi. Meetings never start on time, there are no schedules, everything is sawa sawa (ok, fine, all good). Knowing it is inevitable, knowing that as much as I may yearn for efficiency it will be unattainable, makes it just barely bearable.

Finally at 9:13, we start to drive! For 15 feet. And then pull over. Inexplicably. This is becoming a little much for me. But I try to settle back into The Saturday Nation and relax.

It must have worked, as I don't know what time we properly departed, but two roundabouts later (Nairobi is full of roundabouts) I was sure we were on our way. I settled back into a comfortable pattern of reading the paper and looking out the window when without warning we pulled into a police station. I generally have difficulty hiding my emotions, but I must have looked a combination of nervous, impatient, and frustrated because the mid-twenties young man sitting next to me said nonchalantly, "Oh, they must be stopping us to do a frisk." He barely directed the comment to me, but it was clearly for my benefit. No one else in the matatu even seemed to notice.

So Fred and I began to chat the friendly way you chat with strangers who happen to be your travel companions. He sells internet and grew up in Nakuru, near Naivasha where I was traveling. I asked him if he would tell me when to get off the matatu; he laughed. And then he asked me how I liked Nairobi, what was different about Kenya compared to America.

This is a question I get asked with some frequency, and I never know quite how to answer. I'm not sure I had ever really reflected on it, and it is hard to not focus on the trivial or negative. (The internet is slow ... I can't drink the water ... there aren't traffic rules ... or sidewalks ... the smog is thick ... most people are black here and I'm considered white ...) All of these things are true, but they don't matter, not really. I wanted to give Fred a good answer, a real answer. And as I tried to figure out some pattern behind everything I'd seen, some logic that would be easier to hold on to, I had my Aha moment.

It's all a matter of formality, with America being far more formal than Kenya. Not formal in the sense that people follow specific etiquette around table manners or wear suits -- in these respects I find Kenya to be more formal. I mean formal in the sense of established and/or defined by rules or regulations.

• The economy is informal -- most businesses are micro-enterprises and as such are too small for the government or any other entity to concern themselves with them.
  
  
• Prices are informal -- even when prices are written, which is not all that common, the expectation is that you will bargain. My friend Rohan managed to bargain at the foreign exchange counter at the airport!
  
  
• Schedules are at best guidelines -- as I mentioned before there are no timetables for public transport, meetings don't start on time, and even highly busy people don't schedule meetings or activities more than a few days in advance.
  
  
• Communication is even informal -- everyone communicates by cell phone, which often means texting or "flashing" (calling and hanging up) whoever you're trying to reach. I may have voicemail, but I'm not certain and no one else seems to have it.
  
  
• Even laws are informal -- negotiation and bribery is certainly a part of formal government and police processes, and whatever traffic laws exist are ignored, with everyone driving both defensively and aggressively at the same time.

What fascinates me about all of this informality is, oddly, how efficient it often is, especially if you stop considering time as a precious resource.

I thought I was on a matatu that would take me into Naivasha town. Instead, it dropped me on the side of the road 4 km from Naivasha. Almost immediately, a man approached me on his bike and offered me a ride to town, for 50 shillings. (I paid 30, which was probably 20 too much.) It all ends up working itself out, and for a reasonable price ... just not the way you were expecting it to.

In some ways, it is the extreme of a libertarian state, and the way that you compensate for the lack of regulation is a) knowing what you need to know -- ie what price is reasonable, where you are going, etc. and b) working through relationships. Nearly everything is arranged through referrals (from taxis, to hotels, to tour operators, to food stands), and rather than just emailing a friend with the website of your favorite spot, you call the hotel for them and negotiate them a rate.

It may be good for me, because I have no choice but to let go and not have everything planned out in advance. But, it probably will stress my parents out. Don't worry, mom & dad, in a system like this without formal rules, there is also a much greater sense of shared values and community self-policing. Vendors obey informal codes of conduct, and once a potential customer starts talking to one person, no one else tries to encroach. If they do, they are quickly held aside by any number of other vendors because the proper thing to do is to wait quietly to the side for your friend to introduce you. Two men started to fight in Naivasha town, and other men intervened. I think this is the same code of conduct that ensures that when I ask a Kenyan for directions s/he is likely to shepherd me through to my final destination. So even though the formal system is broken, the informal system is alive and well.